“Sounds like Oncle Julien, Ancient Evelyn and St. Francis,” said Gerald.
Then Mona had departed with the swift and amazing American drawl of: “I gotta hit the computer. Out of my way.” The computer.
When Yuri had gone to get his valise, he had heard the keys clicking. Front room. He had not dared to walk down the hall and meddle in the open door.
“I like Mona Mayfair,” he said now to Aaron. “That is a clever one. I like them all.”
He felt a sudden unwelcome flush in his cheeks. He did more than like her. Hmm. But she was too young. Wasn’t she too young?
He stood to go. Such a lovely house. He was aware, perhaps for the first time, of the fragrances coming from the kitchen.
“Not so quickly,” said Aaron.
“Aaron, they will lock everything!”
Beatrice had just come in. She held a tweed jacket over her arm, one of Aaron’s, worn and loved. And the raincoat for Yuri.
“We want you to stay for supper,” said Beatrice. “It will be ready in half an hour. It’s a very special supper to us. Aaron will be brokenhearted if you go away. I will be brokenhearted if you go away. Here, put this on.”
“We are having supper here but we are leaving?” asked Yuri, as he took the black raincoat from her hand.
“We’re going to the Cathedral,” said Aaron. He slipped on the tweed coat and straightened the thick lapels. He checked for his linen handkerchief. How many times had Yuri watched this procedure? Now Aaron checked his pockets for his keys, and his passport and another piece of paper, which he unfolded as he looked at Beatrice and smiled.
“Come with us and witness the marriage,” said Beatrice. “Magdalene and Lily will meet us there.”
“Ah, you are really to be married!”
“Yes, darling,” said Beatrice. “Let’s be off. The supper will be ruined if we keep it waiting too long. This is a Mayfair recipe, Yuri. You appreciate spicy food, I hope? This is crawfish étouffée.”
“Thank you, Yuri,” said Aaron softly.
She slipped into her own dark jacket, which made the shirt-waist silk dress look suddenly very formal and sedate.
“Ah, this is a privilege,” said Yuri. For this he would wait for Mona’s computer, hard as that would be.
“You know,” said Beatrice, leading the way, “it’s a shame to forgo the big wedding. When all this is over maybe we’ll have a banquet, Aaron, what do you think? When everyone is happy and it’s all over, we’ll have the most splendid party! But the fact is, I will not wait.” She shook her head. Then she said again with just a hint of panic, “I will not wait.”
Thirty-one
HE CHOSE HIS moments for bathroom breaks. Made sure the nurse was standing right there. Then he walked the four steps into the bathroom, shut the door, did what he had to do and came back again.
His worst fear was that while he was taking a piss, she would die. While he was washing his hands, she would die. While he was talking on the phone, she would die.
His hands were still wet now; he hadn’t taken time to dry them. He sat down in the wing chair and looked across the room, at the old wallpaper above the fireplace, an oriental pattern of a willow and a stream. They had so reverently left it when they refurbished. Just that one old panel, the chimney panel. All the rest of the room was fresh and new, surrounding the high antique bed with swaddling comfort.
She lay as before, light glinting in her motionless eyes.
This evening around eight, they had run all the grams again, as he called them. Electroencephalo and electrocardio and so forth and so on. Her heartbeat was no stronger than it had been when she was first found. Her brain was as dead as a brain can get and still have life in it. Her soft, delicate face with its beautiful cheekbones was a bit more ruddy. She didn’t have the dried-out look anymore. He could see the result of the fluids, especially around her eyes, and in her normal-looking hands. Mona said it didn’t look like Rowan. It was Rowan.
Pray you are in some soft and beautiful valley, safe from knowing. Pray our thoughts can’t touch you. Only our comforting hands.
They had put a big rose-colored wing chair in the corner for him, between the bed and the bathroom door. There was the chest of drawers there to the right with his cigarettes and with his ashtray and also with the gun Mona had given him, a big heavy.357 Magnum that had belonged to Gifford. Ryan had brought it home from Destin two days before.
“You keep this. That way if the son of a bitch comes into this room, you can pop him,” Mona had said.
“Yes, I got it,” he said. He had wanted just such a weapon, “a simple tool” to use the phrase of Julien, to use the phrase of his many revelations. Just a simple tool to blow away the face of the being who had done this to her.
At moments, his time spent with Julien in the attic was more real than anything else. He had not tried to tell anyone else but Mona. He really wanted to tell Aaron. But the maddening thing was, he couldn’t get a moment alone with Aaron. Aaron was so angry about the suspect involvement of the Talamasca that he was spending every hour elsewhere, checking on things, verifying, whatever. Except of course for the brief wedding in the sacristy of the Cathedral, which Michael had been compelled to miss.
“Downtown Mayfairs marry at the Cathedral,” Mona had explained.
Mona was asleep now in the front bedroom, on the bed which had been his and Rowan’s. It must be exhausting to go from being a fairly poor relation to the Queen in the Castle, he thought.
But the family was losing no time in designating Mona. It was a matter of expediency. Never had the family known such turmoil and jeopardy. There had been more “change” in the last six months than ever in the family’s history, including the revolution in the 1700s in Saint-Domingue. The family intended to lock up the matter of the designee before any of the cousins could challenge it, before any internecine war began among divisions of descendants. And Mona was a child, a child whom they knew and loved and felt that they could ultimately control.
Michael had smiled at that bit of frank explanation which had dropped so naively from Pierce’s lips.
“The family’s going to control Mona?” Michael had murmured.
But they were in the hall, right outside Rowan’s door, and he hadn’t wanted to talk about all this. He had his eye on Rowan. He could see the rise and fall of her breath. A person on a respirator could not have been so regular.
“This is what’s important,” said Pierce. “Mona is the right person. Everyone knows this for various different reasons. She’ll have a few crazy schemes, it’s bound to happen, but Mona is basically very smart and mentally sound.”
Interesting, those words, mentally sound. Were there many people in the family who were flat-out crazy? Probably.
“What Dad wants you to know,” Pierce had continued, “is that this is your house till the day you die. It’s Rowan’s house. If there should be some kind of miracle, I mean if…”
“I know…”
“Then everything reverts to Rowan, with Mona designated as the heir. Even if Rowan could speak now, this would have to be decided, who would be the heir. All those years when Deirdre was in her famous rocker, we knew that Rowan Mayfair in California was the heir. Also those were the days of Carlotta. We couldn’t make her cooperate. This time we will do things immediately and smoothly and efficiently. I know to you it must seem very strange…”
“Not so strange,” he’d said. “I want to go back in. It makes me edgy to leave her.”
“Sometime or other you’ll have to sleep.”